The Heel Report: 12.01.12: Top 10 Heels of the Week

This is the Heel Report. A weekly chart spanning from Tuesday’s NXT to the Raw Super Show, ranking the heels in professional wrestling based on their actions, wins and losses.

Each Week there are ten places, with points out of ten awarded based on these positions. These points are then added to a rolling chart that will continue each week to show who is wrestling’s overall top heel.

This is a place where the heels of wrestling can be praised for all the hard work they do trying to get us all to hate them, so without further ado let’s get on with the report…

Weekly Top Ten

1st Place: Dolph Ziggler

That’s right, Ziggler stole the number one spot for a second week in a row. Even though the chart only captured the latter half of his golden week, beating Ziggler and facing Cena on Raw in an actually competitive match still makes him sound pretty successful to me. On the heel behaviour side of things he was able to have more time on the mic and while he wasn’t able to cut AJ to the bone again he did more than hang with the face of the WWE; John Cena, and that is pretty impressive for a guy who isn’t even technically a main eventer yet. Bottom line is that if the WWE drops the ball on Ziggler once again then they must be even more of a shambles than most of us believe.

2nd Place: Austin Aries

Much like Bully Ray, A-Double used his mouth on a Hogan to get ahead this week. In some ways Ziggler and Aries are quite comparable; they are both mouthy, arrogant heels getting involved with the biggest baby faces in their respective companies, while still being kept out of the main event. Both men do well in the ring and on the mic but you would have to say that Aries has been more successful so far, but perhaps that Ziggler’s future is brighter as for some reason Aries always feels to me like he is a week away from leaving, but then maybe that is because he performs for TNA and it’s all a little strange over there at the best of times. Hopefully this new angle will see Aries tided over until he can get into the title picture once again and he will be a main event player in TNA for some time to come since he surely deserves it, if for nothing more than being the only man brave enough to offer Brooke Hogan a stuffing while being on a show run by her dad, who surely wants to be first inline himself.

3rd Place: C.M. Punk

The WWE champion edges closer and closer to eclipsing Cena’s reign as the longest running WWE champion in recent memory, which is remarkable when you consider the history of the WWE and its preference for having their top face as champion. Despite how talented Punk is as a heel it still seems surprising that he has found himself in this position, maybe it is something to do with the relative worthlessness of the WWE title at this point, maybe it is because, as the latest rumours have suggested, the Rock wants to face him at the Rumble, or maybe it is legitimate recognition of his skill and talent as a professional wrestler…I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is more likely. The only question now is whether or not the WWE will actually risk putting the belt on the Rock after the Rumble seeing as how he won’t exactly be free to defend the belt on a day to day basis at house shows.

4th Place: Wade Barrett

Wade Barrett did a stellar job on commentary this week, putting himself and Kofi over before their match at TLC. The only problem with the recent Barrett Barrage is that he should be charging towards at least the world title, instead he is gunning for the IC championship and frankly anyone can tell that it is beneath the Englishman. The problem stems back to, as well as his various injuries derailing his career, the WWE not pulling the trigger on him in the first place when it came to a WWE title run as the leader of the Nexus. If Barrett had ended up pinning Orton for the title a couple of years ago things could be very different for the ex-bare-knuckle fighter now, but alas the Miz got that spotlight instead, although he was in the same spot Barrett is in now a couple of months ago so what do I know?!

5th Place: Big Show

Beating the tag team champions in a handicap match and tearing a steel chair apart with his bare hands, not a bad show of strength for the World Champion. Just like when Sheamus first won the belt I have to remind myself that Big Show is champion every now and again. I’m not sure exactly what that says about the title right now but might I suggest that this unification that everyone has been banging on about for over a year might be a pretty good idea at some point in the near future.

6th Place: Alberto Del Rio

First he beat a little speedy bloke in the form of Sin Cara, and then a lumbering giant in the shape of the Great Khali. This should be a really great week for most any Superstar but honestly for Del Rio it is just another case of him having miscellaneous matches where he wins to make him look “strong” before his next loss at a PPV. I really think that at this point it wouldn’t be the worst thing if Del Rio struck up a rivalry with Kofi Kingston since if Kingston can survive Barrett at TLC he could face Del Rio for the title on multiple occasions and keep the belt, having defended it in well contested matches on PPV, which is the one thing that Del Rio can do properly; have a sustained rivalry with some decent matches. The only problem is so far he has only really done so against wrestlers who gain no benefit from feuding with him, someone like Kofi could really get a boost and it would help make the IC title mean something again, just in time for Cody Rhodes to come back and reclaim what is rightfully his.

7th Place: Damien Sandow

Speaking of a returning Rhodes, his injury has left his partner high and dry as since there is no real time frame for his recovery at the moment the WWE is hard pressed to know what to do with Sandow. Last word was that WWE management was pretty high on the team of the Rhodes Scholars so they are most likely hesitant to put Sandow into any kind of long standing rivalry in case his partner comes back early, but since Sandow has been around for a while now, putting him into mostly meaningless matches, even where he gets the win, is pretty useless and does nothing for his character. Hopefully Sandow will use the full extent of his intellectual prowess to get out of this sticky situation.

8th Place: The Shield

I’m going to agree with everyone else on this one and say that the Shield’s impact so far has been moderate, but that at the same time this might actually be a good thing since our expectations aren’t so high right now so the WWE is free to manoeuvre without us condemning the angle as wasted and disappointing a couple of weeks after it began and can actually take some time to really get going. When you look at angles like the Nexus and the Punk Pipe-bomb, sure they were shocking moments, but they were so spectacular and seemingly industry-changing that when things kept on ticking along like normal we were all let down as fans and condemned the angles as failures simply because they weren’t the revolutionary angles we thought they would be. Certainly Rollins, Ambrose and Reigns seem to be some new talent, and now they have a main event focus that could continue for months as long as the WWE don’t get too ambitious and over expose the group too soon. It seems like every three months there is a new angle that could save the main event or even revolutionise the business, and every time it seems like the WWE blows it by moving too fast or too sloppy, case in point; the Ryback. But so far the group has looked good and they have all the potential in the world, let’s just hope that the WWE has truly learnt their lesson this time.

9th Place: Devon

Devon remains the main face of the Aces & 8s and as such he draws the most heat and heel points, I really hope that TNA can come up with a better face though for their leader as while Devon is a seasoned veteran, looking back on the match with him against Kurt Angle at Turning Point he is just not believable in a singles match against such main event talent, at least not yet anyway. While it is possible that he might come good like Bully Ray has done it could easily hurt the group in the meantime to have him at the helm.

10th Place: Antonio Cesaro

Cesaro didn’t have the best week in terms of wins and losses, however he did have a great, competitive match with the former world champion on Raw and that did a lot for his momentum despite losing to Truth on Smackdown to set up for a potential rematch for the US title. Cesaro and Sandow are clearly future main eventers, but will it take them as long as Ziggler and Miz to get to a point where they will truly be considered for the title picture, and even then will they be able to stay in that position?

(Week 69):

1. Alberto Del Rio (277)

2. Daniel Bryan (274)

3. Cody Rhodes (245)

4. Robert Roode (245)

5. Dolph Ziggler (209)

6. The Miz (188)

7. The Big Show (184)

8. Mark Henry (181)

9. Bully Ray (170)

10. C.M. Punk (154)

10. Wade Barrett (132)

JBL on Smackdown – Just a quick mention for the Wrestling God! He shouted “Somebody save my hat!” in the Ziggler-Orton match when it fell on the floor by accident, then Ziggler tosses it aside after he thought the Show Off was going to save it and declared “That wasn’t very nice.” He had beef with Ziggler despite talking him up for the whole match and somehow it was hilarious.

That’s all for this week, The Shield definitely has my interest and I really do hope that they keep this concept up of them trying to stop injustice in the WWE, because heel or face that gimmick could work for some time to come and there is no reason they couldn’t add or switch out members at any time and still have the gimmick make perfect sense, just please don’t have them be buried by Ryback within the first month of their debut! We’ll just have to wait and see, for now this is James Wright signing off.